3/3/17 - Marcus Smart Responds After Fatal Attraction

[The video opens on Marcus Smart, in his usual thrift store metalhead look, his leather vest prominently displaying pins from various indie promotions, the AAW World title belt slung over his shoulder. Iggy Noble sits to his right, tapping away at a laptop with a Reddit robot prominently displayed, and “Anarchy” Andrew Fawkes stands at his left, mugging and cracking his knuckles; all three men are wearing Section 14 t-shirts.]

IGGY: “Feed is live.”

[Marcus runs a hand over his mouth, gazing up into the middle distance.]

MARCUS: “Nero Santana. Nero freaking Santana.” [He chuckles derisively.] “Just when I thought this couldn’t get more asinine, the network tries to sneak the former champion in through the back door.”

[He looks at the camera, glaring intensely.]

MARCUS: “Why are you back, Nero? Paycheck wasn’t as giant as the fed you snuck off to while you were ‘injured’? Movie got stuck in development hell? Or did you just decide you didn’t like me showing your marks what a real wrestling champion looks like?

“Whatever. Doesn’t matter. You can throw around whatever excuse you want, but the truth is, if you thought your reasons were good, you wouldn’t have worn a mask to compete. But see, that was only your first mistake.

“I know what phonies like you think of me. You think Section 14 is a lie. You think I’m just in this for myself. And...yeah, I deserve to be champion. I’m the only one who deserves to be champion. What can I say? You do this masterfully for ten years, you learn to believe in yourself. But you know what I believe in more than that?”

[Marcus lunges forward and grabs the camera, pulling it closer to his face.]

“Wrestling.

“I’ve been doing this for a decade, Nero. And in that decade, I have done a phoenix splash off a lighting rig. I took a Northern Lights bomb in a drained swimming pool. I went through a ten-foot tower of tables. I fought a sixty-minute Iron Man match against three other wrestlers where I took three piledrivers, seven superkicks, and a powerbomb onto thumbtacks and broken glass, and I still did a 630 senton off the bleachers to get the pin. I have shed enough blood, broken enough bones, and ridden in enough ambulances to kill a spongy little Crossfit-and-Gatorade chump like you three times over, and I did it while playing bingo parlors and VFW halls, wrestling for just enough money to keep my body in one piece and still sometimes have some cold bologna with my Top Ramen. And I did it because I believe in wrestling. Because I believe that the Real Fans of wrestling are worth bleeding for. Worth dying for.

“And now here I am, champion of the fastest rising promotion in the country, with millions of Twitter followers watching, and you decide now is the time to try to step to me? For you and your three-martini-lunch puppeteers to push Ace into making you champion? You, the man who turned his back on the belt and then snuck in to grab it when the money wasn’t quite sweet enough? Nero, I did all that to myself because I love wrestling. What do you think I’ll do when you attack it?”

[He puts the webcam back down where it was, and backs up to stand next to Fawkes and Noble.]

“These next few weeks, you’re gonna find out what it’s like to cross Section 14. My minister of technology here--” [Marcus gestures to Iggy] “--is going to make your life hell. My head of security--” [he indicates Fawkes] “--is going to make sure no-one else in this fed gets uppity. And come our title match? I am going to put you through an aerial assault you won’t even be able to see, much less believe. I am going to make you understand exactly what wrestling is, painfully, repeatedly, and endlessly. And then I am going to pin you, and you are going to crawl back to whatever gold-plated rock you were hiding under and leave me to rule this roost like I so richly deserve. Get used to the look of the lights, Nero; you’ll be staring up at them a lot real soon.

“Section 14 out.”

[Iggy types something on his laptop, and the feed cuts to a brief display of the Section 14 logo before it goes black.]

#promos